Virgin Media.. Cmon

ThatJoe

ThatJoe

ThatJoe

Associate
Joined
18 Aug 2007
Posts
781
Location
London, England
May be a long read but the customer service they provide is just full of lies upon lies...

Hi,



My VM 10mb has been down since Sunday afternoon when an engineer appeared at the top of the road next to the green network box and obviously fiddled with something. While he was up there my Internet connection dropped but came back after 2-3 minutes so I assumed it was just regular maintenance, this was until the Internet and TV both went simultaneously..



By the time i reached the top of the road the VM van had already drove off. Got onto Customer support straight away and they said they had no idea why an engineer was there but they were sending someone out for monday between 4-7. Great i thought.



The engineer arrived at 6:30 and proceeded into the living room and told us there was no signal whatsoever coming through to our modem/box/house. So he goes to the green box. 10minutes later he comes back and it turns out the engineer from sunday has managed to pull out the wire that goes to my house and our wire has somehow went under the manhole or somthing along the lines. He mentions that the manhole is also full with mud from somewhere and that by himself he can't do anything, plus the fact it's pitch black outside. He tells us he'll report the issue and someone should be around first thing tomorrow (tuesday) morning to sort things out.



Tuesday late afternoon arrives and no VM vans have come down our road and the green box is untouched. We thought okay, time to ring customer service again. After getting swapped around departments we were asked for our number and that the area manager would contact asap.



By this time another engineer had turned up (neighbour in the flat above obviously has no service either and had called someone out). This engineer spent what i'd imagine to be 30minutes or more down the manhole trying to fix the problem. He eventually came back to the house and let all of us know that he's tried to clear as much of the problem and that the wire must have really been pulled back because it shouldn't just fall down from the box. Once again he assured us that someone would be around the next morning(wednesday) to fix the issue and get the house properly connected. Also, the area manager hasn't contacted us at this point.



As you may have guessed Wednesday late afternoon had come and no-one had turned up either at the house or at the top of the road. After spending from 5PM till just after 6PM on the phone to customer service after being swapped around departments I came to a friendly guy called John who after we explained the issue (for about the 5th time that night) told us he would ring us back after he went to see if he could find out what had happened. He rang back 10-15minutes later (Thank god!) and assured us that he's passed our number onto the Area manager (again) and that if he hasn't contacted us by thursday afternoon to ring back again.
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Update:

Is VM for real? On NTL the service was pretty much perfect. Thursday came and went and after ringing in the evening once again on the beloved customer support number we were told that the area manager has noted it down and they'll definitely be fixing the issue tomorrow(Friday).



Friday came and now it's just past midnight and no-one turned up. Suprise Suprise when ringing VM we're told it would be Monday..



Surely i'm not the only one seeing this as being fobbed off day-by-day..
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It's just seriously unfair in so many ways in what they provide.. Through no fault of my own i lose all services. Only option i have is to either wait after being told it'd be fixed the next day again and again etc or cancel.. ideally i'd hope to have some service back before christmas but everyday i lose more hope in VM...
 
Never had any issues with my 10mb line (touches wood) bar the occasional instance on peak times where they drop the line from 10mb to about 3mb but that only occurs if i cane 6-7gb in about 3 hours.
 
By the sounds of it, it's not really a matter of fairness but possibly a matter of it requiring potentially relatively major work to sort out which the normal engineers/teams may not have the equipment for.

If there is mud in the ducting and your cable has disappeared down there, they will possibly need a specialist team to clear the mud before they can do anything else (they'll need to clear the mud out which will, depending on how much is there, and how it got in, potentially require cleaning/pumping gear at a guess*), then potentially another to fish the cable out, or if it's been damaged at all replace it.

Having said that you've been getting the run around which isn't on and I'd possibly be looking at contacting someone higher up to get a straight answer (the guys on the phone might be able to give you a rough idea, but not a fixed time for it to be sorted if it's something unusual/that the normal engineers can't sort out).

Ultimately it's very poor communications from VM (nothing too unusual there, and not acceptable:( ), and the need for a specialist team, which always takes longer as there are less of them (normal VM engineer wait times are from memory meant to be under 2 working days for initial appointments, specialist teams such as repulls are longer).

IIRC the cable forum has some guys who can get in touch with/bypass the normal front line phone people when a problem isn't getting sorted.


*Probably something closer to dynarod than normal VM engineers :p
 
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